“Gross impiety it is that a nation's pride should be maintained in the face of its poor.” William Penn wrote these words in 1669. We have no means of knowing what his voice might have sounded like when he read them aloud, as he undoubtedly would have done, but when I hear them in my mind's ear, they are spoken with firmness and a touch of anger. They are words we do well to heed in our own time.

Church agencies in Britain will be combining efforts during Poverty and Homelessness Action Week, from 26 January to 3 February, to highlight both the human face of inequality and the need to make it a public policy priority.